create your own visited countries map
(mommy’s map)
So for once I’m not referring to my personal lack of posting, but literally where on earth have you been? It’s a very cool interactive map generator that allows you to show where you have traveled. And as appalling poorly traveled as I’ve always felt myself to be, doing this has show it’s actually far, far worse than I’d thought. Entire countries, continents, major regions of the globe are missing. Even in the places I have traveled, I’ve usually only been to one or two cities. (Maybe I should be comforted that at least I’m better traveled than the president when he was elected? OK, maybe not.)
I would love to travel. Really travel. Not just breadth but depth, not just quantity but quality of travel. One of the homeschooling groups I’m on just had a post asking everyone if money and time were no object, what would you be doing? Almost everyone responded that they would still be doing the same thing they are now. My first thought was that it was amazing that they were all so satisfied with their lives, followed by the swift reaction that maybe I was in the wrong group. If money and time were no object, I’d be heading to the airport. Grab all five of our passports and head out the door.
I would love to do in-depth travel. Stay in a country a while. Not the US version of fly out on Friday night as soon as you get off work and have to race home the following Sunday night to go back to work again. I love how the Europeans spend weeks or months traveling; not just because it means more vacation time, but because it allows them to actually get a feel for a country, a place. To get past the touristy, must see level, and find the nooks and crannies.
What could be better than spending a few months in Spain to learn Spanish? Or studying art history in Paris? Studying biodiversity in Costa Rica or the Galapagos Islands? Learning to meditate in Japan?
Even the vacation we just returned from had it’s moments to discuss geography, population density, weather, history. New York is huge and, with only a few days, we barely scratched the surface, but still we talked about the things we saw around us. Which was quite a bit. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty led to immigrants then and what they face now. Why is there a Little Italy and Chinatown? D noticed all the decoration on the so many of the buildings: columns, textured bricks, gargoyles. Why does Manhattan have such different architecture than Arizona? So we talked about old versus newer architectural styles and the costs of building. Transportation is another huge geographical feature. In Arizona both people and goods are transported by car or truck with the occassional freight train one usually doensn’t see. In Connecticut and New York, there are boats, ships, trains (both passenger and freight), subways, cars, trucks, taxi’s and the occasional bike courier.
We could have discussed it all from home, looked it up in books and read about it. But there is something about being there than makes the differences and similarities all make since. Now we just have to figure out how to get more places . . .
